The Floating Gardens of Xochimilco (chimpampas) are just 25km (15 mile) from the historic centre of Mexico City, but as a mega-city of 22 million people, it can take over an hour to reach them. They have a delightful carnival … Continue reading
Although Cesar Manrique’s El Jardin de Cactus is his best-known landscape intervention, Jameos del Agua is his most spectacular. Visitors descend first into the large cavern-like café-restaurant, then zig-zag down a steep bank planted with shade-loving perennials into an astonishingly … Continue reading
Compared to its two neighbours, Gran Canaria and Tenerife, Lanzarote is considered a very quiet, perhaps rather dull place to go for a holiday. Fortuitously, It has escaped the excesses of tourism because of a unique partnership, between the internationally-renowned … Continue reading
Whilst visiting gardens in the Netherlands in the late 1990s, I decided I must make a pilgrimage to see his Piet Oudolf’s garden at Hummelo. He was a rising star in the garden world. It was early May, and in … Continue reading
Until a few years ago, the Hilltop site at the Royal Horticultural Garden at Wisley was a storage yard, an uninspiring glasshouse and a line of somewhat tired small show gardens. There was a small conventional vegetable garden nearby, and … Continue reading
Just a few miles from two internationally known great gardens, Sissinghurst and Great Dixter, made famous by their media-savvy owners, lies Pashley Manor, a less well-known garden in the English Country Garden style. The owners, the Sellick family bought the … Continue reading